Awful grinding noise while attempting to start

jjuriga

jjuriga

Junior Member
I have a 1987 200/v8 merc. I put it in the water on Sunday, started great and ran beautiful (just had the lower unit serviced and seals replaced due to leaking gear lube). Parked it at my dock, washed it etc and when I went to start it last night, it made an awful grinding noise. I stopped there as to not cause anymore damage. Def sounds like the starter... which I replaced back in 2015.that's the logical place to begin, right?
 
yep, sounds like the starter, check all your battery connections, feel the battery cable to see if there are any hard spots
 
spareparts said:
yep, sounds like the starter, check all your battery connections, feel the battery cable to see if there are any hard spots
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I was reading yesterday that bad battery connections (dirty) can cause this as well. I literally just replaced one of my batteries and left the other one out. put i tin the water with one and it ran great. Docked it, and put the other battery in... next day it started with the grinding. I know the batteries are good... but the connections I'll take a look at later.

"Hard Spots" in the cable... What you mean by that?
 
if a battery cable gets any internal corrosion, the cable in that area will get stiff and hard. You cut the insulation open and its green or black corrosion on the copper. See it all the time with Yamaha outboards. I use a load tester to check the battery cables. If the battery passes load test, I check it at the engine, if it fails at the engine, I start checking components between the two, one at a time. If I think the cable is bad, I'll work the cable back and forth, if you find a bulging area, or stiff area in the cable, its most likely bad at that point. Battery switches can go bad as well. Putting a bad battery with a good battery can screw things up also. You can use a good set of jumper cables to test the circuit as well. From the sound of it, I'd check that starter. Make sure the mounting bolts are tight and the ground cable to the starter is good
 
So my plan was to start with replacing the battery connections... even though I figured it was the starter. They needed it anyways. After getting all the cables and terminals replaced, I went to get a feel for the bolts on the bottom of starter and who would've guessed: both damn bolts were loose and the whole starter had play.

Bolted that ***** back up and BOOM! Runs beautifully!
 
I love a happy ending, but what I learned from experience is you always start at the easiest and obvious point , I had a issue either my 50 horse mercury when I went to start it the volts dropped so much it would not start,weird right, so I asked a mechanic and he said I would have to drop it off cause I have a drastic power drop, holy crap that sounds expensive I said to my self so I got home and said,Joe start at the beginning,the battery's and guess what the cables were lose, tightened them up and away I went, always start at the most obvious,
 
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